Posted
by
Soulskillon Monday October 04, 2010 @04:54PM
from the one-hip-device-per-child dept.

tugfoigel writes "According to Xconomy, 'The One Laptop per Child Foundation and Santa Clara, CA-based semiconductor maker Marvell have cemented a partnership announced last spring, with Marvell agreeing to provide OLPC with $5.6 million to fund development of its next generation tablet computer. Nicholas Negroponte says the deal, signed in the past week or so but not previously announced, runs through 2011. "Their money is a grant to the OLPC Foundation to develop a tablet or tablets based on their chip," he says. The OLPC tablet ... is known as the XO 3 because it represents the third-generation of the XO laptop currently sold by OLPC (the foundation scrapped plans for its e-book-like XO 2 computer and is moving straight to the tablet). ... The deal, he says, means the tablet's development is "fully funded."'"

The OLPC project went nowhere. They took money and work from the community, then they sold themselves to microsoft, and achieved none of all their goals. The project went nowhere.

There are already awesome tablets like the aPad that exist right now and retail for less than 200 dollars. I'm sure you could drive them below 100 if you built enough and bought them altogether.

Why are we still listening to the OLPC's pipe dreams about developing hardware? They already proved that they can't get anything done, and that they will sell out if necessary. Want to do something? The product you want is already out there. Buy it, drive its price down, and start delivering.

OLPC should be a Linux distro that runs on any major architecture, and is slim enough that you can throw it on a used computer from 1998 and run it without issue. It should also run on the glut of shitty quality me-too tablets that have been "announced" since the iPad came out.

What they need is something made of metal, with a metal screen protector, that opens up to expose a solar panel. That way the kids can prop the thing up in the window while they are outside playing, and when they get home it is all

Well, if Sugar on a Stick already exists, why are they fucking around with hardware?

In a lot of poor areas, power is still available. There are a nearly infinite number of used, but still fully capable computers out there. Maybe the OLPC project should be helping schools generate power and shipping them used computers by the palate.

OLPC jumped the shark when they bowed down to MS. How are kids supposed to learn unbounded when they have to deal with Windows? They are making users out of these kids, when they should be making explorers out of them.

That's a Bad Analogy. Sometimes the tool is clearly broken. Or sometimes it's clearly a case of being forced to use the wrong tool and then being called a sore loser when you fail. Microsoft loves forcing everyone to buy a bag of hammers when what they really need is one hammer, one screwdriver, and one saw.

windows is the wrong tool, not because it is crappy OS (it is, but it is sufficient for most tasks),but because it won't run on hardware cheap enough to have made the OLPC practical and barely ran on the hardware they ended up using.

Wrong, not only is there WinCE, but you might want to Google "TinyXP Beast Edition" which runs great on a 600Mhz with 64Mb of RAM. I know because I tried it and it was quite snappy. If some kid with no access to the code can make XP run that well I'm sure MSFT can do even better. There is also WinXP Embedded, which IIRC only needs a 500Mhz and 128Mb of RAM.

If you wanted to give them Linux to teach them programming that is one thing, but acting like all Windows run like Vista is just FUD. I just don't know w

When you were in grade school you had teachers that at least knew some of what they were talking about, you had the ability to read your own language and your class all had the same teaching material. Why don't we start with just raising the basics first?

Uh, people have been trying that for a few thousand years, and look how far it got us? In much of the world where the OLPC is being delivered, working on "just the basics first" means knowingly condemning them to the same economic backwater status that they've always had.

Maybe the OLPC won't fix all the world's educational problems. This is almost certain, if fact, because it's going against the local power structure that has kept the population uneduc

I used an OLPC for the first time at a free software event in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago, The units they had were on loan from a school. It is a fantastic machine. Very rugged and attractive to children. I would probably prefer a stock ubuntu install instead of using the sugar UI, but the hardware is open so you can do that.

I think its a shame more people didn't get an opportunity to buy them.

I think its a shame more people didn't get an opportunity to buy them.

Lots of people had an opportunity to buy them. "Buy one Give one", for example.

The problem was OLPC was vaporware, at least as far as being able to provide the "buy one" that I tried to buy. They charged my credit card the day I ordered, then tried dragging the delivery date out until after the time limit for contesting the charge. They lied to me about delivery dates about three times, claiming they had them in stock one day, then two days later admitting they'd been out of stock for a month.

I'd have cut them a lot of slack if they'd been honest about being able to provide what they charged me for, and didn't charge me until it shipped, but they shot themselves in both feet the way they did things.

If they've gotten their act together now, good for them. Once burned, twice shy.

Did you miss the part where they put out 1.5 million laptops [wikipedia.org]?
Yeah, a $100 target would have been better. Twice as good in fact.
Sticking strictly with open and free is debatable. If they can wheedle a few million out of MS in exchange for some empty promices, so much the better.
The product that they want IS the XO. It has a lot of nice features that other cheap laptops don't.

Do they really need a tablet version? Shrug, I dunno. But to say that the OLPC project went nowhere is a bold faced lie. Just b

Just dumping computers on poor schools isn't what the OLPC project is about.

Any charity that has gone in and just dumped a bunch of aid on a country (not in a disaster of course) has always been a failure, especially food aid. I watched a good ted talk from a women trying to get a village to help themselves out of poverty. Some douche bags ruined all her hard work by coming in dumping a bunch of food and then leaving. Suddenly everyone there stopped working on the farms and tada the cycle repeats itself.

There are already awesome tablets like the aPad that exist right now and retail for less than 200 dollars. I'm sure you could drive them below 100 if you built enough and bought them altogether.

The aPad isn't awesome, but it does exist and is a functional tablet device that can be had for $100. I think it demonstrates that OLPC could produce a rugged 7" tablet for less than $100 and it would be great for kids. My own feeling however is that the hardware is the easy bit and it will be the software which wi

Because the OS in this case is a stripped down Red Hat distribution with X11 on top and it's not suitable for a tablet. It uses too much memory, takes too long to start and X11 is utterly unsuitable for touch. I expect Sugar is also woefully unsuited for touch devices and would require major work, especially if it has to be ported.

There are embedded Linux dists which would be more suitable, or even Android which is built from the ground up for smart phones and touch devices.

Yeah, the question is, why the fuck do we need the olpc project then? The hardware is already out there. Do you want a tougher *Pad? add a rubber case.

Any device for children has an exacting list of requirements for hardware, software, localization, educational curricula, infrastructure for administration / distribution / repair and all the bureaucracy that goes along with it.

I'm sure you could stick a rubber case on an aPad but that doesn't make it fit for the task.

They took money and work from the community, then they sold themselves to microsoft

No, they didn't sell themselves to anybody.

and achieved none of all their goals.

"None of all" is a kind of weird construction, but they did, in fact, acheive much of what they set out to do in terms of getting computers, software, and content into the hands of students outside of the first world to enable education on the constructiv

I don't understand how people thought they completely sold out to Microsoft.

An SD slot was included for increased capacity, and for standard mass storage that could be addressed by Windows (compared to direct access flash). The Firmware was updated to be friendlier to booting other operating systems. That's about the extent of what support they gave to Microsoft. Microsoft still had to write their own drivers, and figure out how to market it as a complete education product. However these two modifications m

The OLPC project went nowhere. They took money and work from the community, then they sold themselves to microsoft, and achieved none of all their goals. The project went nowhere.

Not this old bullshit again. OLPC didn't "sell out to Microsoft" any more than, for example, Linux Emporium or System76 has. You can install Windows on an OLPC laptop (apparently, though I've never seen the process) & you can install Windows on a Linux Emporium or System76 laptop. Nobody ever does install Windows on an OLPC though, since every one of the million+ laptops out there is running Linux.

There are already awesome tablets like the aPad that exist right now and retail for less than 200 dollars. I'm sure you could drive them below 100 if you built enough and bought them altogether.

And there were plenty of laptops around when OLPC was first announced. What's your point? Are you yet anoth

Consumer demands and what happens in IT are two very different things. People want applications, not an OS. The OS is just like a disk, a memory module or some other mindnumbingly boring thing. As long as it runs your applications, works well and stays the hell out of the way people couldnt care less about what OS they run.

Using Windows is not possible if your goal is to make a computer that just works without loads of management and fuzzing about. Managementwise, it really sucks.

Depends on your point of view. From the point of view of their (ex) development community, most of whom walked away when they fastened on to the Microsoft's teat, yup, they caved like a nun bluffing on a pair of nines.

Depends on your point of view. From the point of view of their (ex) development community, most of whom walked away when they fastened on to the Microsoft's teat, yup, they caved like a nun bluffing on a pair of nines.

I fail to see why this matters; the machines were not intended to give the "developer community" (whatever that is) the warm fuzzies; they were intended to help kids in underdeveloped countries get access to technology and education, and better their lives. If using Windows opens more doors f

And it's exactly that "screw the developer community" attitude that killed XO-1 as an interesting platform.

Here's the crib notes: if you're going to ship a Windows device, you just order a million EEE PCs and sell them at cost, with a solar cell to charge the battery. Heck, you could ship Linux distros on them. XO-1 was always a vanity project, and when it went Windows, it ceased being of any interest to the people who could have helped make it succeed.

The EEE (and any other netbook) PCs are far too fragile and not repairable by end users to the same degree that the X0-1 is. If I wanted to ship a computer to kids, the XO-1 is still a great choice, even running Windows.

With Linux the OS supports itself. Teach the kids how to use man and apropos and ls and cd, and they can take care of the rest themselves. This is how I learned Unix when I was a kid.

My point was, for the usual desktop things, an old PC works fine. If they need tons of CPU horsepower because they figured out a possible cure for AIDS, then they can dump that problem off somewhere that has the horsepower to deal with the problem.

How can you teach kids to use man when they don't even know how to read english let alone their own language? You seem to be completely missing the point of the OLPC project. It's not to make a ton of unix hackers, its to better the education of children is rural schools that receive little funding for books, paper and quality teachers.

These clowns couldn't get the XO-1 out without getting way too cozy with Microsoft and abandoning everything which made geeks interested in it. They wouldn't get the XO-2 out of R&D because the tablet is the new hotness. Whatever. They will tank it out too. If you want my attention, scrap sugar and put on Android. Otherwise don't bother.

No, no, no. Put on android, and put Sugar on that. Sugar's not an OS, and I hear it's nice. Development of sugar shouldn't slow down production of the tablet, and the obvious way to develop a tablet quickly is to use the Android (and Linux) drivers already available. Get it up quick with Android (or Linux) and then work on Sugar on that. The teams shouldn't overlap.

That chip is really, really good. I've tried it for several projects, and even though it came second to the freescale CPU's because of the requirements - if there wouldn't have been those requirements (of the industrial kind), then that marvell chip would've won out. Big time.

That must be second in a two chip race, because both NVidia's Tegra and Qualcomm's Snapdragon are leaps and bounds ahead of Marvell and Freescale as far as features and performance goes. Price is a different story, of course.

Scorpion core is amazing. It's just too bad about the rest of the SoC.

I will admit off the bat that my info is about 9 months old, and I know that Marvell was working on fixing the main problem of their SoC, namely it's 16 bit bus width. While the core itself is really fast (I'm sure you've been shown the raw performance metrics), the limited memory bandwidth means that the CPU is idling most of the time waiting for instructions to cache. Once they are cached, as in most "core benchmarks", it turns out performance at almost Atom speeds.

A quick Google suggests that Marvell's been busy, and that they have some higher-performance designs now, but maybe that's just buzz control. And we don't know what would be going into the OLPC, as they stray away from the Moby reference design (to something LOWER cost?), or whether Marvell will improve things.

Were you looking at the Armada 600 (which is in the current Moby reference) or some other Sheeva-based (Armada?) SoC from Marvell?

The tablet market is already crushing itself to a zero margins race to the bottom even before the first Android tablets hit the shelves. The sweet spot for tablets is going to be $150.

With OLPC and Marvell getting into this, we can expect fairly good tablets with usable screens and good interfaces to be pushed closer to $100, and everyone will have to figure out how to follow suit or die.

I am happy about this because I am not a tablet manufacturer. I anticipate being a tablet user, though, and probably a

Heck yeah. The OLPC guys came out with a neato box for $200, and you had to buy one buy buying two (on for you, one for a kid). They missed their mark by something like a factor of two, but definitely came up with a bunch of good ideas for an educational device, and a cheap one, at that.

Sure they'll miss the mark on this one, too. But it'll still push the industry downward. It won't take much innovation to get prices even lower, but it will take some. OLPC will provide some of that.

See, I must disagree. The only successful tablet that you can buy is from Apple. Everybody and their mother put their toe in the tablet water, mainly to benefit the shareholders by appearing to take some action, but nobody other than Archos has a decently priced tablet yet, and the Archos sucks.

The tablet race only has one runner in it, and a guy in a wheelchair, and about sixty thousand ghosts who appear to move no more swiftly than a piece of fluff in a light breeze.

The bad news is that the child with an OLPC while she may learn to do art on her computer, won't learn to do anything helpful in any labor market on earth. With a tablet, she won't even learn to touch type. I know that the project wants to prepare her for more self-actualizing career, such as poet, designer, president or CIO, very few will have that opportunity if they can't get an entry level job in the urban sector.

Uh... maybe she won't be a grunt laborer then? Maybe she'll sell out her artistic ability?
Did you know that there are people online who live off of donations in exchange for regular updates? It's a mysterious world called webcomics [wikipedia.org]. I suggest you check it out.

Wow. Right. So, access to the web including sites such as Wikipedia will do nothing to prepare her for the larger world. Rapid, low cost communication won't help either. Diverse news sources that provide perspective to villagers are equally pointless. Only if it runs MS Office and Windows 7 is it of any use.

The OLPC gives a child in a rural area an opportunity to have a better education then otherwise.

I live in Thailand where news came out recently that 80% of teachers failed their own subjects they were teaching. Books get donated to rural schools however because all the books are donated they aren't the same so it makes teaching a class incredibly difficult. Knowing English here significantly increases your chances of getting a better job or education however there are no good english teachers in villages be

The bad news is that the child with an OLPC while she may learn to do art on her computer, won't learn to do anything helpful in any labor market on earth. With a tablet, she won't even learn to touch type. I know that the project wants to prepare her for more self-actualizing career, such as poet, designer, president or CIO, very few will have that opportunity if they can't get an entry level job in the urban sector.

Erm... how about she can learn Maths, Science, programming, engineering, etc. etc.? How about she Googles for a better way to sanitise water, or look after cattle, or for the price of bread in the nearest towns? How about she uses it to contact people who can give her advice on how to care for her sick mother? Do you seriously think computers exist so that people can learn to touch type??!